Madame Bovary is perhaps the first 'modern' novel.  It has always been the most popular of Flaubert's books, and the character of Emma Bovary, a beautiful young woman longing to escape from her dull husband and the constrictions of ...

Emma Bovary, a bored provincial housewife, abandons her husband to pursue the libertine Rodolphe in a desperate love affair. A succès de scandale in its day, Madame Bovary remains a powerful and scintillating novel.